1 Chronicles7:6–12

The three names come from Genesis verbal / quotation: confirmed

The Verifier's strongest match for this unit is Genesis 46:21, the seventy who went down into Egypt, where Benjamin's sons are listed ten deep. Bela and Becher stand at the head of that list exactly as they do here, and Cambridge states the relation directly: "These three names come from Genesis 46:21." The third name differs, Ashbel there and Jediael here, which is the whole crux of v. 6. ⚙ The link is textual, not merely thematic: the Chronicler is working from the Genesis roll, and every commentator in the brief, Ellicott, Benson, Barnes, JFB, Poole, Gill, Geneva, Cambridge, Pulpit and K&D alike, reads the two passages against each other.

Genesis 46:21

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H1071 Beker (in 4 vv, rare) and H1106 Belaʻ (in 14 vv, rare), plus H1144 Binyâmîyn (in 160 vv). Two rare proper-name lexemes shared in the same order supports a genuine verbal dependence on the Genesis list; Cambridge names the dependence explicitly. No quotation formula is claimed.

Anathoth and Alemeth: two men who became two towns verbal / quotation: confirmed

Two of Becher's nine sons carry names that are also Benjamite Levitical towns. Ellicott notes that Anathoth and Alameth, as he spells it, "were Levitical towns in Benjamin" and cites 1 Chronicles 6:60; Cambridge cites the same verse and Jeremiah 1:1; K&D generalise the mechanism, that the cities "received their names from the heads of the families which inhabited them." ⚙ If that is right, one entry in this list is the origin of the village where Jeremiah was born, and of the field Jeremiah later bought there as a sign that exiles would come home (Jeremiah 32:7-9). A name in a census became a place on a map became the setting of a prophecy.

1 Chronicles 6:60 · Jeremiah 1:1

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H5964 ʻÂlemeth (in 4 vv, rare) with 1 Chronicles 6:60, alongside H1144 Binyâmîyn and H7969 shâlôwsh. The Jeremiah 1:1 leg has no Verifier-computed shared-lexeme basis in this unit and rests on the named citations of Cambridge, Ellicott and K&D, who all point to Anathoth (H6068).

Shuppim and Huppim, and the trap four verses later flagged: verify source

The Verifier's second-ranked candidate is 1 Chronicles 7:15, which shares both rare names of v. 12. That match is exactly the one K&D warn against: they argue that "the peculiar forms of those names" here "seem to have arisen from an improper comparison of them with" the pair in v. 15, "in which the fact was overlooked that the Huppim and Shuppim of 1 Chronicles 7:15 belong to the Manassites." ⚙ So the lexical link is real and the historical link is probably an error, possibly an ancient one lodged in the text. Ellicott instead traces this house through Genesis 46:21 (Muppim, which he calls "a mere slip of the pen"), Numbers 26:39 (Shephupham and Hupham) and 1 Chronicles 8:5 (Shephuphan and Huram, the last of which he judges to be a scribe's error for Hupham). We flag the pairing rather than assert it.

1 Chronicles 7:15 · Numbers 26:39

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H8206 Shuppîym (in 3 vv) and H2650 Chuppîym (in 3 vv), both rare, with 1 Chronicles 7:15. Flagged because K&D hold that the 7:15 pair are Manassites and that the resemblance may itself be a transmission error, so the shared lexemes do not establish a shared referent. Numbers 26:39 is carried on Ellicott's and Gill's named equation of Shupham and Hupham with these names, not on a Verifier basis.

Jediael: one rare name, several men structural / thematic: confirmed

Jediael occurs in only six verses of the Hebrew Bible, and half of them are David's men: Jediael son of Shimri among the mighty men (1 Chronicles 11:45), the Manassite captain who deserted to David at Ziklag (1 Chronicles 12:20), and Jediael the Korahite gatekeeper (1 Chronicles 26:2). ⚙ These are not the same person as Benjamin's son, and we make no claim that they are. What the shared rare lexeme shows is narrower and still worth seeing: a name meaning "Known to God" clusters in the Chronicler's own material about David's establishment, which is consistent with Cambridge's reading of v. 6, that the Chronicler favours names confessing the God of Israel.

1 Chronicles 11:45 · 1 Chronicles 12:20 · 1 Chronicles 26:2

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H3043 Yᵉdîyʻăʼêl (in 6 vv, rare) with all three references. Deliberately tiered structural rather than verbal because the shared lexeme is a personal name borne by different individuals; the link is onomastic and thematic, not referential.

Becher among the Ephraimites structural / thematic: confirmed

Numbers 26:35 places a Becher and his clan the Bachrites in Ephraim, not Benjamin. Barnes builds a whole reconstruction on it: Becher "or his heir, married an Ephraimite heiress," so his house "passed over in a certain sense into the tribe of Ephraim," retaining a place here "because, by right of blood, he really belonged to Benjamin." Pulpit follows the same line and credits the discussion to Lord A. C. Hervey. K&D reject it and argue instead that Becher's descendants were simply too few to form a clan in Moses' day and multiplied afterwards into the nine houses and 20,200 men of vv. 8 and 9. ⚙ The two accounts cannot both be right, and the verse does not decide between them.

Numbers 26:35 · 1 Chronicles 8:1

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H1071 Beker (in 4 vv, rare) with Numbers 26:35. Tiered structural rather than verbal by deliberate under-claim: the lexeme is genuinely rare and genuinely shared, but whether the Ephraimite Becher is the Benjamite Becher is a conjecture Barnes labels as such and K&D reject. 1 Chronicles 8:1 is named by Benson, Poole, Gill and K&D and carries no computed lexeme basis here.

The tribe that is not named flagged: verify source

Dan is absent from 1 Chronicles 7, and v. 12 is where that absence becomes audible: Hushim is Dan's only son at Genesis 46:23, and the very next verse of this chapter closes with "the sons of Bilhah," Dan's mother. Poole gives four arguments that aher here means "another," a coded Dan; JFB call the coincidence a presumption in favour of that rendering; Cambridge suspects an illegible manuscript; Ellicott gives three counter-considerations, among them that Zebulun is missing too. Henry, on the chapter as a whole, connects the silence to Judges 18 and to Revelation 7, where Dan is likewise not sealed. ⚙ We tier this low on purpose: the Revelation link is cross-Testament and rests on an omission in both lists, which is an argument from silence twice over.

Genesis 46:23 · Judges 18:30 · Revelation 7:5-8

basis: No Verifier-computed shared-lexeme basis exists for any of these pairs in this unit, and the Revelation leg is Greek against Hebrew, so a verbal tier is impossible in principle. The whole link rests on a contested reading of H313 ʼAchêr as the common noun "another" (asserted by Poole and reported by JFB, Cambridge and Ellicott, and rejected by Ellicott and K&D) plus Henry's association of the Judges 18 idolatry with the omission in Revelation 7. Provenance genuinely disputed; recorded as flagged.

Known to God: the name that replaces the name of Baal novel

Cambridge's reading of v. 6 is that Jediael, "Known to God," stands in the register where Ashbel, "Man of Baal," stood, and that the Chronicler is enacting Hosea 2:17, the taking of the names of the Baals out of Israel's mouth. ⚙ Our extension is this. The New Testament ends the same movement: to the one who overcomes is given a white stone "and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it" (Revelation 2:17), and his name is not blotted out of the book of life but confessed before the Father (Revelation 3:5). Paul reverses the ordinary direction of knowing in the same terms: "now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God" (Galatians 4:9), and "if any man love God, the same is known of him" (1 Corinthians 8:3). A Benjamite entry whose whole name means known to God is the small Old Testament shape of the thing the gospel makes large: the register that saves is the one God keeps, and the name that counts is the one he gives. Marked novel: Cambridge supplies the Hosea link and the etymology, and the Christward extension is ours.

Hosea 2:17 · Revelation 2:17 · Revelation 3:5 · Galatians 4:9

Enrolled by pedigree, or written in heaven novel

The verb that closes each of the three Benjamite houses is וְהִתְיַחְשָׂם, the Hitpael of yâchas: they had themselves enrolled by pedigree. It is nearly a technical term of the restoration community, and Ezra 2:62 and Nehemiah 7:64 show its edge, where priests who sought their register and could not find it were excluded from the priesthood. ⚙ The New Testament takes up exactly that anxiety and answers it with a different register. The seventy return elated and are told to rejoice instead "because your names are written in heaven" (Luke 10:20); Paul names his fellow workers "whose names are in the book of life" (Philippians 4:3); the Hebrews are told they have come to "the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven" (Hebrews 12:23). The structure is the same in both Testaments, an enrolment that establishes who belongs, and the difference is who holds the book. Marked novel as a reading of this pericope: none of the commentators in the brief draws the line, and the connection is one of shared institution and vocabulary, not of quotation.

Ezra 2:62 · Luke 10:20 · Philippians 4:3 · Hebrews 12:23

Benjamin counted, Benjamin spared, Benjamin sent novel

Ellicott and Cambridge both read the totals of this unit against Judges 20:47, where the whole tribe was reduced to six hundred men hiding at the rock of Rimmon. K&D make the same point from the arithmetic: 45,600 at Numbers 26:41, then near annihilation, then 59,434 here. ⚙ The redemptive-historical line runs from that near extinction through this muster roll: the tribe that survived it gave Israel its first king, and after that king's house fell, gave the church the apostle who introduced himself as "of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin" (Philippians 3:5) and who argued from his own pedigree that God had not cast away his people (Romans 11:1). The 17,200 "going out in host to the battle" of v. 11 are the ancestors of a man whose warfare was of another kind (2 Corinthians 10:3-4). Marked novel: the survival of Benjamin after Judges 20 is the sourced observation of Ellicott, Cambridge and K&D, while the line drawn from this census to Paul is ours and rests on no commentator in the brief.

Judges 20:47 · Philippians 3:5 · Romans 11:1